The Embedded Writer

A New Model of Creative Writing Programme for Delivery in Community Settings

Abstract

This critical reflective paper discusses development of a health research methodology focused on creative writing in collaboration with Home-Start Essex, a charity supporting young families. It explores how a process of embedding a creative writer within an organisation over an extended period might progress a new model of practice built on a two-way exchange of skills and knowledge between practitioner and client group. A series of interconnecting creative writing workshops for Home-Start’s Thriving Communities project in South Essex was created and delivered with the aim of improving family mental health and wellbeing. These House of Dreams and Memories workshops were inspired by Gaston Bachelard’s work The Poetics of Space. Participants in the workshops were encouraged to build their own House of Dreams and Memories, an imaginary space of nurture and renewal inspired by Bachelard’s theory of poetics. The creative writing sessions were bookended by wellbeing sessions delivered by the Wellbeing Co-ordinator for Home-Start Essex. This joint delivery model offers opportunities to enhance outcomes for both creative practitioner and the commissioning body, and provides an example of best practice with a potential for scaling up. The article reflects on the challenges faced in setting up such a collaboration and concludes with a discussion of ways to progress the model as both a creative arts opportunity and evaluation tool.